Maurice Strong speaks the party line

I picked up my copy of MacLean's Magazine at the end of a shortened but very busy week at work. After supper and fortified with a decent Sicilian wine (2004 vintage), I turned to an article at random to find myself reading an article written ostensibly by Maurice Strong (see photo), the well known Canadian champagne socialist, multi-millionaire, and now fully revealed, Chinese Communist Party fellow traveller. Oh yes. He is a mentor to former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin.

On reflection however, I came to the conclusion that Comrade Strong's piece was really ghost written by a gaggle of Chinese communist party communications flacks undertaking damage control for the public relations fiasco leading up to the Peking Olympics.

I accept that my conclusion was driven by drink. I am a Celt after all and a long time civil servant to boot, so I am therefore, familiar with the effects of drunkenness and political spin on public policy matters. I accept that Maurice Strong may well have written it. His agitprop is entirely consistent with the plethora of crap written throughout the 20th century by those whom Vladimir Lenin called "useful idiots of the West." His defense of evil is an ignoble, but unfortunately all too common, tradition with those on the left.

Here is the great man.

To be sure, this process has been a difficult and even painful one for many, but both Chinese and Tibetans continue to learn and to accommodate the changes that will enable Tibet to retain its distinctive cultural and religious heritage while according its people new and growing opportunities for a better life.

Note the denial of the extreme efforts of the Communist Party to eradicate Tibetan culture, religion and identity. He even disingenuously suggests that the Dali Lama's differences with the Chinese Politburo amount to mere quibbles over the degree of autonomy Tibet ought to be allowed to possess by their Chinese colonial masters.

Regrettably, most of the article is behind a firewall, but here are a few tidbits upon which you can chew.

Societies progress at different speeds, and in different ways, towards incorporation into their political and social stystems of the highest principals to which they aspire.

Translation. We ought to judge the Chinese communist dictators on whether they achieve their own internal aspirations, not any universal human rights norms.

Or this:

China has made immense progress towards meeting the goals and objectives articulated by its leaders of producing a harmonious society guided by science that will meet the needs and aspirations of all its people and contribute towards a sustainable and equitable world society. Indeed it [the Chinese Communist Party] is embarking on a distinctive an unprecedented pathway to a new model of development based on utilizing methods of capitalism to achieve the goals of socialism - a socialist market economy.

Distinctive and unprecedented? This is, of course, intellectual blather. I'm not saying Strong doesn't believe what he is asserting. I can't judge the his interior thought processes, but I am saying that his reasoning process is utterly bogus crap. The Chinese Communist Party politburo, witnessing the partial-eclipse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1990's and the dissolution of large segments of the Soviet empire, decided to abandon the completely incoherent theories of orthodox Marxist-Leninist/Maoist economists and adopt a market driven (capitalist) economic model led by an elite socialist governing tyranny, continuing to call itself the Communist Party of China.

Now where have we seen this scenario before? You soft leftist advocates think hard now. Can you spell NATIONAL SOCIALIST?

Think about that.

Strong is a strong advocate of the Kyoto accords. In fact, I would say he is a high priest of that religious cult. Here is some of what he has to say on China and global warming.

China realizes that it will be one of the most vulnerable victims of climate change and is already taking serious measures domestically to avert these risks. But it cannot be expected to transform these into binding commitments that are not matched by firm and enforceable commitments by the countries , notably the Unite States, whose accumulated emmissions of greenhouse gases have caused the irreversible damage already inflicted on the world.

Where does one begin? I am not a Kyoto cult member, but it is instructive to those who are, to simply note that China is currently increasing its greenhouse gases to such an extent that it is adding the equivalent of the entire industrial output of Germany each and every year. It is building hundreds of dirty coal fire electrical generating stations. Typical of Marxist/socialist tyrannies China is a environmental disaster in action.

One more quote for the Gipper.

The needs of the poor and the newly developing countries cannot be subordinated to the wasteful and indulgent appetites of the rich. and their pre-emption of a disproportion of the world's resources.

So sayeth this very wealthy socialist/industrialist globetrotter.

Pardon me while I go look for a barf bag.